Bump Out (updated Jan23/Mar24)

As befitted a lao ban of sorts, five or six day wake for one of the brothers next door in the four storey Carpmael house. Tenting had been erected in front last week and the procession had included a busload of office girls Friday afternoon. After the sun had gone down, as usual Auntie Helen was feeding her outdoor litter and we two stopped to watch the stream round the corner from Onan Road, where the charter had parked. Black tops in the insurance company uniform it may have been that the Carpmael brother ran, a lucrative operation clearly. In front of our house the cul de sac had been filled throughout with gleaming motors. The casket sat up beside the entry door to the Cassa, tables and chairs arranged in the yard covered in white cloth. Fans and perhaps portable aircon units; still in the heat you wondered about the volume of ice that had been needed for the body. For the last 2-3 days there had been the expectation of a wrap-up; they had surely done enough in that forecourt. Chanting monks had attended a day or two before. Only this morning though had the hearse arrived for the final journey. With the larger truck and vans that had been parked there it had not been noticed at first half way inside the gates. What was noticed this morning was the tune filtering out from one of the trucks, it seemed. The lads had the radio on while beginning on the disassembly. An odd kind of bump out; not the thing at all. It’s now or never… Volume low; whispering almost. And this was not Engelbert; not pianissimo like that. Come hold me tight... There might have been a suite of songs chosen by the bereaved family, favourites of the deceased, Jafaar at Wadi later sensibly suggested. Like many of the Malays, a big fan of the Indian crooner, Jaf. No points awarded a few minutes later when the man added that a more appropriate choice of farewell may have been Please release me… Jaf had been a performing and indeed recording vocalist in his time. Leeeeet me goooo… A diabetic and dialysis patient, who always kept his pecker up.